These Tornadoes Are For You
by Kathey27
Summary: They're all that's left of the misfit toys. / Or, The world ended on a Tuesday. AU. allison/stiles/derek brotp.


**A/N: I have a thing for killing off everyone but these three it seems…I am not in the least bit sorry.**

**This little thing is an AU future apocalypse fic with lots of angst because that's what I do best.**

**I hope you enjoy this angst feast, and the theme song for this fic is "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons because of reasons.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned anything Derek and Stiles would be endgame, Allison and Scott wouldn't end up together but she'd still be pack, Isaac would tell Scott he loves him, Jackson and Lydia would conquer the world together, Boyd and Erica would be married and Peter would be sassy all the time.**

**xxxxxx**

"This is the way the world ends,

not with a bang, but with a whimper."

- T.S. Eliot, _The Hollow Men_**  
**

**xxxxxx**

**these tornadoes are for you (they're all for you):**

They run out of gas in Wyoming.

It's Allison's turn with the jeep and as soon as the car finishes rolling to a stop Derek's wrapping an arm around her shoulders and resting his head against the nape of her neck. She leans into the touch for a second before reaching forward and tapping her nails against the dashboard.

"How long?" He mumbles and his warm breath provides a faint distraction from the jeep's chill.

"Maybe four, five hours." She replies, gaze set on the fading sun outside.

Derek sighs, glances back to the body pressing against his legs and, "we'll wait out the night."

She lets down the window tarps and crawls into the backseat.

xxxxxx

The world ended on a Tuesday.

The virus hit Italy first and spread out across all of Europe within a month's times.

Death and chaos and blood and destruction followed. Bringing with them famine and war and hysteria and the end of everything.

California was wiped out in a week.

Beacon Hills in a day.

xxxxxx

Stiles presses his thumbs into both of their hipbones, watches the blood bloom to the surface before disappearing away beneath his touch.

They're huddling in the back of the jeep, sleeping bags out and lights off. Derek likes to make them wear his clothes at night, says it confuses the Drifters when they get nearby. Stiles doesn't complain, simply takes them and tries to smell what's left of the pack's scent. Allison is too tired to argue with anything anymore.

"We can make it to South Dakota if we start today." He whispers into their skin, tapping his nimble fingers against their pulses. Allison twists out of Derek's hold and gives Stiles a resigned look.

"It's 500 miles."

"Then we better get started."

Derek gets up and walks back the ten miles the jeep put between them and the last gas station.

xxxxxx

The jeep's radio had died three days after California, in Nevada.

Stiles was driving them through some woods and the music had just turned to static. Rather than listen to Allison's silence in the back seat he began to babble about physics and sound waves and "they just get plucked right out of the air" and it ends with Derek ripping out the radio, chucking it, and just barely missing Stiles' head.

Very Erica-esque of him.

xxxxxx

There's a portable CB radio on the jeep's dashboard and it's used every Wednesday at exactly three in the afternoon.

Whoever's driving that day shakes Stiles' awake, passes him some water and the radio.

He stretches out in the backseat and puts his trucker hat on, flashing both a wide toothed grin.

"I don't know what you're doing, it's not like anyone's going to answer." He ignores Allison and presses the mic to his lips.

xxxxxx

In California, UC Berkeley had been one of the earliest hit and that's where they drove first. They scavenged the apartment and searched every hidden room and place.

(Erica's bedroom was perfect and still the same as always and there wasn't one speck of dust, nothing to show how much time had passed, how much had been lost and – )

They left with nothing.

xxxxxx

Stiles presses his chin against Allison's knees and gazes into her eyes.

"Look what I found."

Perched on his head, in a hideous shade of green, are a pair of plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sunglasses. "Oh, and these." He jingles a bag of quarters in her face before placing them beneath the passenger's seat and bringing the shades down to his eyes, giving her his best sultry smile.

"Stiles, they're disgusting."

The grin he gives in response is almost enough to give her the strength to sit up. Almost. "Positively nefarious if I do say so myself."

"You can't keep hoarding everything, you know Derek's going to – " She doesn't finish the sentence because it would be a lie. Derek lets Stiles get away with pretty much anything these days.

"I got you a pair." She ignores this in favor of scrapping her nails against the jeep's artificial top. She wonders if they can pick up any nail polish at the next pit stop. "Aaaaand, these."

A stack of postcards fall onto her stomach, cutting off any idea or hope for ignorance.

"Figured you needed a hobby. Derek has the singing, I have my trusty radio, you can have letters." His eyes have that far away look they get when he's thinking about Erica. She swallows and thinks of hugging him. The slightly crazed glaze in his eyes stops her.

"Postcards?" She asks instead, pressing her hands to the slightly dusty sack.

"…so we don't forget."

She takes them.

xxxxxx

The virus had hit Beacon Hills on their first full moon apart in a year.

Lydia had managed, in all her inerrant greatness to place them in colleges and universities in relative distance to each other. Lydia, Jackson and Boyd at Stanford. Allison, Stiles and Erica in UC Berkeley. Isaac and Scott at Beacon Hill's Community College. It was great and perfect and everyone was happy and they were doing great as a pack. Lydia's plan went of immaculately (_obviously_) and included each group renting out a small apartment instead of dorming ("for appearances stiles, just shut up and do it"). Stiles spent most of his time complaining (loudly) about rent due to the fact that they all really spent most of their nights at the renovated Hale house. Even if Peter was always trying to sneak up on them and making sassy, snarky remarks at everything and everyone. By the three-year mark, they all knew just to hand him some whiskey and let him battle it out with Stiles or Allison when he got like that.

The virus had hit two days before finals and the only ones that had been together were Allison, Derek and Stiles. Everyone else either couldn't make it that moon or were already locked down for the night.

Derek spent the night jittery and irritable and his fellow pack mates ignored him for the better part of the night, trying to cram for their Criminology class. When they continued to ignore him he smacked them both upside the head and made them help with rearranging the furniture because "if lydia gets here and it's still not done you two will be the ones to explain it to her".

The night ended with Derek withering on the floor in pain and there being nothing left behind.

xxxxxx

The day Allison's iPod died was the first day she said more than five words.

She'd been salvaging it up to that point, only using it a few minutes a day to ensure a lasting battery. The charger is just one thing on the long list of things left behind.

The iPod's battery finished on a Tuesday in Arizona around one in the afternoon with Stiles trying to convince Derek to give him a cool trucker's name because "that way, if i ever get lost and you need to find me, all you have to do is shout like _butter knuts _or something and – "

Derek rolled his eyes, leaned back into the driver's seat and, "trucker name or not, i will always find you."

Before Stiles could express a comment sure to piss off Derek enough to revoke said declaration, a sob was released from the back seat. It was small and barely audible but it gained the alpha's attention and therefore Stiles' as well.

"Aly? Hey, you okay back there?"

A pause.

"I…I can't hear anything."

"What – "

"I can't hear anything and it's so quiet," Her voice was raspy and dark and dry but she kept going anyways. "has it always been this quiet? I-I need noise. I need something to – I need to – "

They heard what she couldn't say. She needed something to fill the absence of Boyd's stare and Peter's comforting snark and Lydia's sass and Erica's confidence and Isaac's truth and Scott's warmth and Jackson's…just Jackson.

Stiles climbed into the backseat before anything else could be said. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close and whispered lies into her ear.

Derek let down the tarps, chucked the iPod out the side and climbed in with them.

xxxxxx

She remembers asking Peter once, after one really awful day and she was hiding out in his bedroom. It was around two in the morning and the rest of the pack was mostly asleep so when the former alpha turned over on his side she looked up from her position on the floor and pressed her knees together.

"Why don't you hate me?" She meant to ask it steadily and quick but it came out shaky and a bit scared.

The smirk he offered her would have scared her right out of the damn room a few months ago. She inched closer.

"I could ask you the same thing." He smirked. Yes. His _words_ actually smirked. Bastard.

She stared him down until he sighed and sat up slightly, making sure to let it be known what an effort it was.

"I did. I hated you so much." He whispered and ran a hand through his hair and that's how she knew this was serious. He never gave away anything unless it was. "But…you make the pack happy. You make my nephew happy."

A ghost of a smile fell onto her lips. There was more.

"And…you're a lot like Laura was. I think that's why Derek didn't like you." Pause. "Or it could be the fact that your aunt was an psycho ephebophilia bitch."

She offered him her best snarky look in return and leaned her head against his bookcase. "Asshole."

"Strumpet."

She let out a string of choked laughter and threw at his head a dusty volume on astronomy.

The bastard caught it.

xxxxxx

"What do you think we're going to find in Dakota exactly? _Sane_ survivors?" Derek asks this with just the smallest hint of hatred. Stiles has spent years learning to ignore that tone.

He runs his fingers through Allison's hair a few more times before answering, "Booze. I'll be legal in exactly six hours." The days had started to blend together sometime after Arizona but he'd made sure to remember this much.

"'Lot good it'll do for you."

The twenty year old traces a rugged scar along her shoulder before moving her head from his lap to the leather, leaning forward in his seat and popping his double bubble cherry gum bubble against the alpha's ears.

When Derek doesn't respond he leans back and falls asleep to the first few notes of a Rolling Stones' song.

xxxxxx

After one really bad full moon Erica crawled into Stiles' bed, pressed her back to his chest and pulled his arms over her own.

"Wassup?" He mumbled a few seconds later, eyes sleepy and half open, woken up by the warmth scorching his front and the mouthful of blonde curls cutting off his snoring.

She pressed her head into his shoulder and sighed. "Nothing…just, needed my Batman."

He didn't mention the hitch in her voice or how tight she was clutching his fingers and went back to sleep.

xxxxxx

Dakota is a bust and they end up staying in the jeep anyways.

Stiles ignores their glares, pops more gum into his mouth and marks off another state on his tattered map.

xxxxxx

They should have kept driving.

xxxxxx

She runs her hands down Derek's back, washes away the blood there and skims her nails down invisible scars.

"I wish you wouldn't heal sometimes." She digs her nails in where she remembers him taking an axe wound meant for her senior year. It'd taken an hour for it to completely fade away.

He doesn't offer a response and all she can do is find the closest invisible scar, the one he would have gotten after that wendigo went after Lydia and he ripped it to shreds.

"How am I supposed to know you're real if I can't see your bruises and marks?"

More silence.

She looks over to where Stiles is burying the bodies a few yards out and, "that bullet was meant for me."

He slides out from underneath her and turns over. His hands clasp themselves around her neck and hold on tight. She doesn't even try to pretend like she doesn't lean in. "You're my bruises and marks."

She presses a bloody kiss against his jaw line and signals Stiles over.

xxxxxx

Their first night as seniors was the first time Allison said anything to Peter that wasn't venom or fear filled.

It was twenty after ten and some fairies had found it fit to bring their territorial dispute into Hale land which in turn translated to Derek, Stiles and Boyd being too busy with negotiations to party. Which translated to everyone else going off to run patrol. Which translated to Allison staying behind so her dad didn't pop a vein when he found out because he would find out and according to the Sheriff "pack enemy or not, he's your father".

She was in the Hale living room, going through Stiles' Robert Downey Jr. collection when she came across what looked like a forgotten record. It was dusty and cracked but she'd known it was important simply because Derek hadn't thrown it out yet. She could remember the day he'd gone off on a rampage on _Isaac_ of all people for moving an old mirror.

She was about to put it back when a voice from behind called out and stopped her. "That was Hannah's."

It almost snapped in half in her hands right then and there. She placed it down gently and prayed Derek wouldn't be able to smell her on it.

"Hannah?" She kept her voice as steady and still as possible; knowing Peter, he'd use any inflection possible against her. The paddle of bare feet became louder until he was right behind her, reaching down and plucking the album up.

"Derek's mother. My brother's wife."

She vaguely recalled pictures of a dark haired beauty lying around. She'd always wondered what kind of a woman would have shaped Derek, what he might have been like if Kate hadn't –. The only person who'd ever even tried to breach the topic of the Hale ghosts before had been Erica and Derek hadn't spoken to her for a week. Maybe…

"What was she like?"

A sigh. "Beautiful. Strong. An amazing woman who tamed my brother and brought together the pack in a way no one else could have."

She turned around on her heels to find the former alpha sitting on an armchair, trying to conceal the pained look on his face. "Were you guys…close?"

"She was my best friend. I loved her."

For a second she tried to forget the man who hunted her and her friends, used her boyfriend, killed her aunt and tormented Lydia, tried to picture the man who stayed to the side and let his brother be happy while he loved his sister in law from afar. It hurt.

"Did she…did you ever…" Piercing blue eyes clogged her throat. She cleared it before continuing, almost afraid of the answer. "Did she know you loved her?"

His head titled to the side and it looked so innocent and slightly funny and he reminded her so much of Derek in that movement she almost felt like crying, almost sad she'd never get to know the man he'd once been. She digs her nails into her palm.

"I think a part of her knew. Somewhere, somehow. I had years to tell her, dozens of chances. Mark was always the better brother."

She thought of how he'd helped rebuild the house and how he'd turned down the offer from the alpha pack to join them and how he'd saved Jackson from those witches and Lydia from the rival pack and how he'd never once said anything when someone took a stab at him verbally. She wanted to tell him she didn't believe that but before she could Boyd was entering the room and Peter was gone.

Moment over.

xxxxxx

Stiles began calling them Drifters in memory of Danny.

A week into Nevada with them staying out in a remotely clean motel included the customary dead bodies.

Stiles picked up the guitar and poked at the skull before him, expression quiet and measuring. It was still too early to think about it, to even say any of their names without pain erupting from every single part of his body. But this…this half rotting body was…

"Do you remember," he called out to Derek, voice low and raspy from the hours spent shouting. "the night Danny found out about us? How freaked out he was?" He didn't mention that that was the night Danny got ripped apart by the rival pack but whatever, details.

"Yeah." Stiles also didn't mention how little the sourwolf talked since D-Day.

"He called us the Drifters. From that book we read in English class."

Derek came to stand behind him, gaze sharp and empty and hollow. He kicked the skull sharply. "Drifters. I like it."

Stiles wrapped a hand tightly around the alpha's ankle and didn't let go.

xxxxxx

Derek sings every day at exactly two fifteen in the afternoon. It's the only five minutes a day he doesn't look like if the world were to try and set him on fire he'd let it.

Stiles steals ear plugs for the really bad ones. Allison listens to every note.

xxxxxx

Allison spends her days off writing postcards.

She sits in the back seat, pen bleeding, marking her black and blue and writes to ghosts.

The first one gets sent to her dad and it's an apology letter, really. She says sorry for all the grief and pain she caused him and for leaving him and for not being there to save him. _i'm sorry i left my heart in a werewolf's den._

The second gets sent to Scott and his is a love letter. Always starts with _lover_ and ends with _mine_ and the first one she writes to him is smudged with dry tears and dead kisses. _lover, why are you always leaving me?_

The next gets sent to Jackson and it's long and broken into sections and offers lengthy anecdotes about life now and Stiles and his quarters and radio and Derek and his singing and how it's all broken without him because Isaac was the baby but he was the glue. _i dream with your blood in my mouth._

She writes dozens and dozens to them, to the pack and she pours her tears and fears and tries to pretend like the little trio that could isn't tethering at the edges.

At each new state borderline, she gathers up the postcards from the previous state and lets them go into the wind.

(It never feels as satisfying as Stiles says it will).

xxxxxx

The first set of bodies they'd found had been Chris Argent, the Sheriff and Deaton.

They'd been at the vet's, mangled and bitten and bloody and the three of them had stayed with the bodies for hours before packing up and leaving.

(Melissa had been visiting Scott. Her body had been the last).

xxxxxx

"What do you think is even in Iowa? Corn?" Allison asks this a few minutes before the state line, gathering up card after card.

Stiles lowers his trucker hat, pushes in his TMNT glasses and shrugs. He glances back at the sleeping werewolf and, "think derek will let me practice my rounds on him?"

She grabs his gun and slides it under her seat.

xxxxxx

At the next gas station Stiles empties out the cash register, pockets the bills and wastes each and every dime on mini slinkies and gumballs and Rolos.

Allison, filling up their gas tank and additional cans smiles at him faintly. "Those are beyond expired."

Stiles offers a shark grin in response as he roles one caramel chocolate into his mouth and grabs at the spinning postcards (because "aly, they'll help trust me, give them more time. it's only been five hundred of them"). She's never seen him more heartbreaking.

"Rolos are Erica's favorite."

Are. Not were.

She doesn't mention it again, not even when he spends the night throwing up by her side.

xxxxxx

Lydia and Jackson had their last chapter in the middle of junior year and it was all very anti-climatic.

Lydia told the pack that she dumped him and he took it like a man and they had awesome break-up sex.

Jackson told the pack that he broke it off and she punched him but it was all good because they had awesome break-up sex.

This is what really happened:

Lydia straddled his lap, buried her fingers into his hair and, "Jackson – "

He shushed her with a kiss to her forehead. "I know." His fingers found their way to the small of her back and rested there. She leaned in and sighed, blinking away at teary eyes. "Good while it lasted, huh?"

"Yeah." He pressed another kiss to her collarbone before pulling away and smiling.

This was the catalyst to what would become the Jackson-Allison show.

xxxxxx

The minute they cross over into Iowa the jokes start.

"Hey Stiles, what did the corn say when he got complimented?"

He puts down the CB mic for a second, mid speech and blows a nice, big, bubble in her face. Derek kicks the back of his seat and continues to play with his claws. "What?" he shoots back before the werewolf can comment on anything else.

The grin she gives back in response, no matter how fake it really is underneath, makes what she says next worth it, "Aww, shucks!"

She then proceeds to explode into laughter.

Derek starts cleaning out their guns.

xxxxxx

When they left California, when they left it all behind, this is all they took, all that Derek would allow near him:

A photo album, a guitar, all the guns and ammunition in the Argent garage, a full book bag, and three duffel bags.

(They don't talk about the photos or the guitar or the CB radio or the trucker hat or the diaries or the comics or any of the things they couldn't bare to leave behind. All the things that inhabited the book bag. All the things none of them can even touch when the nights get to be too much).

xxxxxx

"Derek, how is an ear of corn like an army?"

"…how?"

"It has lots of kernels."

Stiles begins to very loudly and very badly strum away at the guitar.

xxxxxx

The day they encountered their first Drifter, Derek got bitten and Allison tore the mutated human apart with her bare hands.

Okay. After sophomore year and Victoria and the bite and everything, Allison's inclusion into the pack had been on tentative terms as a favor to Stiles. At first. ("please derek, come on, we need her, we do. she'll be good and she'll convince lydia and derek – scott needs her. she's messed up. isn't that what you do, take in the broken ones?" and when that didn't work, "_i _need her.")

Erica forgave her, hugged the Argent slowly and carefully and whispered a secret into her ear that no one would ever get to hear.

Boyd forgave her, over time, watched her quietly and intensely, told her to stop trying so hard and stop trying to excuse herself and to let go and "welcome to the island of misfit toys."

Stiles forgave her, pulled her in and kissed her forehead and pressed their palms together and told her that "it's not your fault your grandpapa is such a fanny nugget."

Derek took her aside and gave her the pack talk because he remembered back when he was too tired and too stupid to do anything right and how she had stood by his side with Stiles and Scott. How she had, in the end, stood in front of an alpha for him and won. And maybe Boyd was right, maybe the Hale house was misfit island, where all the unwanted, misused and misguided pieces came to find a home.

So when the Drifter attacked Derek, nearly comatose, still reeling from the lose of his betas Derek, her alpha, her extremely awkward big brother when Scott was being an idiot, she snapped.

She dropped her gun, charged forward and used her nails to rip out blackened eyes and a pus filled tongue. Tore it off of him and kicked in its skull with the heel of her boots and made a mess of guts and blood against the jeep's door.

It took six hours and a lot of tears and messy confessions to realize that Derek was immune. They don't talk about it.

xxxxxx

"So – "

"No more corn jokes!" This is snapped on a Sunday (or monday…or maybe thursday…they lost the calendar a while back) by Derek and it catches neither of them by surprise.

Stiles, from his position in the backseat, leans forward and says, "I actually want to hear this one."

"Yeah well, I wanted to drop you off at that motel last night while you were drooling into my jacket. Too bad." Stiles stabs him in the back with the butt of his gun.

She goes on as if she hadn't heard either of them. "what has ears but cannot hear?"

Derek, claws digging into the driver's seat upholstery, lets out a sigh the length of one of Stiles' CB rants and nods.

"A field of corn."

He rips a chunk of the dashboard out.

xxxxxx

On the nights of the full moon, depending on where they are and how many Drifters are nearby, Derek sheds his clothing and embraces his full alpha form. Runs alongside the jeep and lets Stiles pet him and Allison bury her face in his stomach and howls deeply into the night.

Rips open Drifters by the scruff of his teeth and stretches out and sleeps on the jeep's hood.

These are the only nights he so much as whimpers.

xxxxxx

"What does corn have that we don't?"

Stiles put down Lydia's diary and Derek stops recounting their cans of food.

She answers herself. "A field of family with it."

Stiles leans forward and wraps his arms around her shoulders.

xxxxxx

Allison goes missing their last night in Iowa.

The corn jokes have stopped and she's back to scribbling in the back seat and they notice she's missing at exactly nine forty seven.

They find her miles from the jeep, bare except for shorts and a sports bra, no weapon in sight. She's hot to the touch and won't stop shivering and when they're on their way back, Stiles carrying her and Derek watching their back she presses her nose into the human's collar and, "Scott?"

He tightens his hold.

xxxxxx

At the start of Senior year, during one of Allison and Scott's on-phases, Scott began to fade out of Stiles' life. They were still pack together and fought together and made fun of Jackson together but other than that, Scott was nonexistent.

Began to slide out of the Stilinski household and into the Argent one, taking with him years worth of laughter and secrets.

That is where Erica came in.

Erica stepped into the best friend role and helped him get over Scott and took him to midnight movies and held his head back as he vomited alcohol and listened to all of his Iron Man rants and held his hand the anniversary of his mom's death.

Stiles, throat tight and closed and nose runny, leaned back into Erica's soothing hands and asked, "Why aren't you at pack movie night?" It was his third day home sick and he hadn't been able to so much as move the past few days, Erica and his dad doing pretty much everything for him.

"Can't desert my Batman, can I?"

He smiled, coughed through the pain and, "You're the best Catwoman."

xxxxxx

The guilt starts in Missouri around the same time that Allison picks up a southern accent.

They're a few yards from the jeep, Derek with a target above his head, and Stiles with a shotgun.

"How long do you think it took for them to die?" This is gets asked with a slight twang and steady voice.

Stiles misses his shot and Derek gains a new hole in his stifling black tee.

"I mean, werewolves and their healing…their cells were probably fighting to repair the body as they were being torn in to." Pause. "Eventually the body had to have given in."

Derek pulls his bloody shirt off, throws it at Stiles' head and, "Allison – "

"Do you think it hurt?" Her voice cracks and her eyes glaze over and the knife beneath her hands slices into her thumbs slowly. Neither moves to help her.

She drops the knife, steadies her bow, fastens the arrow and lets go. The target falls to the ground, a nice, new clean hole ripped through it.

xxxxxx

Stiles, Derek's jacket thrown over his shoulders, presses a soft kiss to Allison's shoulder and, "It wasn't your fault."

She puts down one of Isaac's numerous comics and snatches a gumball from his 'hidden' stash. She chews for a few seconds, pops a bubble before starting.

"How about this one? Scott was on campus finishing our anniversary present and Isaac was helping him so he wouldn't use too much glitter. Erica was with Boyd looking up more information on the Strigoi I asked her for, for the next meeting. Lydia was trying to find a new spell to make my shots more accurate and Ja-Jackson was acting as her anchor. And Peter – Peter was negotiating with the pack in New York for my upcoming graduate classes."

His arm slips from her shoulders.

xxxxxx

If there was one thing Kate taught Derek, one thing that didn't involve smoke and ashes and hatred, it was how precious and beautiful pack was. How precious and beautiful_family_ was. Even if it was in the form of a group of hyperactive, horny teenagers.

So as soon as the fight with the alphas was over, as soon as Erica and Boyd were returned and Gerard was dead and Peter had proven his place and Scott had submitted and Allison became theirs, he began to tear down the Hale house.

With Stiles and Isaac by his side he tore up floorboards and tore down walls and broke apart structures and stairs and with his new family, built the house up from ashes again.

xxxxxx

If anybody asked him, Derek would roll his eyes and say he didn't have a favorite. He didn't have a favorite no matter how much crap Peter talked or how many times Stiles winked at Isaac or how long Scott whined for.

It was a total lie of course, but for personas' sake, he had no favorite and that was that.

Except, it was always Isaac who chose where they went on pack dinner nights and it was always Isaac who chose the movie and it was Isaac who was allowed near Derek on the anniversary and it was Isaac who could back talk to him and not get his arm broken (anymore) and it was Isaac who got the first room in the rebuilt Hale household.

Except, it was when they found Isaac's body that Derek tried to throw himself down a fifty-story building before Stiles knocked him out.

xxxxxx

Allison rolls over on the grass, leans onto her elbows and pokes the alpha in the chest. "We should have gone to Hawkeye Point."

He doesn't mention how they'd been too busy keeping her body temperature down and her blood flowing regularly. Thank god Stiles picked up something from spending so much time at the ER.

xxxxxx

They raid a supermarket six miles into Missouri and Allison spends the whole walk there singing 'You're Gonna Miss Me'.

"Don't you remember? From _Pitch Perfect_?"

Stiles picks up a bottle of Hawaiian Punch, takes a swing of it, nods and adds it to the cart.

She looks back to where Derek is sniffing out the good meat and starts to hum quietly; she remembers just fine how annoyed Derek had been when her and Erica kept stealing all the plastic cups from the kitchen.

"_I've got my ticket for the long way 'round. Two bottles of whiskey for the way and I sure would like some sweet company and I'm leaving tomorrow, what do you say? When I'm gone, when I'm gone; you're gonna miss me – _"

Stiles stops the cart, spins it around and nearly smacks it into Allison's stomach. He doesn't look the least bit sorry. "I remember. It was Lydia's favorite song all junior year. She sang it with you and Erica at the top of her damn lungs on the beach trip we took. Derek locked her in the Porta Potti for an hour."

She stops humming and goes to look for more antiseptic.

xxxxxx

The pack came together through a sheer miracle. This is what Lydia would say, with a quick roll of her eyes and flick of the hair.

That was usually the part where Peter stepped in, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and made her want to pull his skull out in three seconds flat.

The truth is, the pack came together because it was either that or death.

Jackson's parents were seconds away from shipping him off, Peter was plotting with shadows, Erica and Boyd were captured, the alphas were pitting Derek and Scott against each other and setting their eyes on Lydia.

They had two options: survive or die.

Scott switched packs, Stiles brought Allison, Lydia kept Jackson in California, Peter remained loyal to his nephew and Erica and Boyd escaped.

They survived.

xxxxxx

Allison has a dream where the world doesn't end because of a lab in Venice.

In this dream she marries Scott and they live happily ever after and Jackson gives a toast at their wedding and finally gives his approval and her dad shakes Scott's hand and the pack thrives and grows and they never have to know the taste of fear ever again.

That's usually when she wakes up to Stiles having a panic attack and Derek howling into the night.

xxxxxx

There are days where no matter how nutty or screwed in the head Coach was, Stiles thanks the heavens for him.

Days that have him running for his life from blood thirsty non humans with no ammunition in sight and no gun and only one old bow. Days that have him running for his life with no backup whatsoever or end in sight.

Days like this.

There is sweat pouring down his face and back, his legs are burning painfully and his chest is about to collapse. But he can't stop, he can't stop running because if he does he's going to get infected and then Allison and Derek will be alone and they've both lost so much already and he can't, _he can't_ leave them alone. They won't survive it. They won't survive without him.

So he keeps running, he keeps running until he reaches an old barn and then he keeps running until he's scaled the sides and he keeps moving until he's on the top and that's when he's pulling off wood strings from the faulty roof and tightening his bow string and shooting down Drifter after Drifter.

Derek finds him eight hours later, comes running towards him in full alpha form and drags him down by his ankles.

He curls around Stiles and shelters him with warmth that night and rides him through the panic attacks.

xxxxxx

They don't talk about Colorado.

It's the one state Stiles didn't mark down and it's the one state that they stayed in for over three days and it's the one state that was almost the death of them.

By that point they'd been tired and hungry and weepy and still had fresh, tender wounds and just needed a place to crash for a few days.

Stiles was still holding onto his dad's CB radio like it was a lifeline and Allison kept trying to hunt down food for them with her arrows and Derek had resisted the full moon the past month and they had let their guard down because they were the only ones left.

They found a cabin in the woods and parked the jeep and laid out their supplies and set bear traps and rigged doors and entryways. They fixed the plumbing and electricity and made a fort out of blankets and pillows and ratty clothes.

They bathed by candle light and got comfortable and –

"Can we stay?" She asked her alpha, throat scratchy and knuckles bloody and stained. He poured water down her back and pushed back her hair. Remembered her feral sounds and boots digging into skulls and – "yeah, we can stay."

They set up shooting ranges out back and perfected their already perfect shots and spared with his wolf and raided nearby 7-Elevens and supermarkets and –

"Boyd would have loved it here." Stiles said this as he cut down the overgrown weeds from their front lawn.

Allison stretched out on the dirt and made herself a dust angel.

They set themselves up a home and a place to live and be safe and thrive.

They had peace for five weeks before they were found by other survivors. Five weeks before they were attacked in their new haven and forced to spill more blood – _human_blood – to protect what was their and –

one of them tried to take scott's guitar and stiles tore his eyes out with –

allison was pinned down and her shirt was torn and derek ripped apart three jugulars in –

fire was set to the shooting ranges and stiles broke necks and picked up derek and –

They don't talk about Colorado.

xxxxxx

The Southern accent continues. Allison starts humming lullabies and Mama Cass and dropping the g's in her words and it's not long before she's spread out against Missourian dirt and talking to nothing.

Derek drops what he's doing and talks with her; Stiles puts on his glasses, slips on his hat and starts singing along with her.

xxxxxx

Stiles catches her with a postcard and this one has a mountainous beach on it and he catches Isaac's name and he asks, "do you write about me?"

She drops the accent in exchange for him burning the TMNT shades. He cackles, taps her sunburned nose and offers her a pound of quarters instead.

She takes them.

xxxxxx

Stiles can't say when he stopped hating Peter and began asking him to buy booze for the pack behind Derek's back.

It was before the witch but after Allison's own revelation (which consisted of her sneaking into stiles' bedroom at shit o'clock, stealing his blankets and whispering "he loved her") and it came slowly.

It wasn't just there one day, that undeniable trust. That feeling you get from knowing you have a pack that loves you and will protect you and take care of you. It grew and shaped over time and eventually Stiles was able to call Peter at four in the morning with a question on the Bestiary and not fear getting sassed at too harshly.

As time went on and Peter stayed and helped and saved and lived with them, Stiles began to accept him.

Which is why when they realized where his body probably was Allison hadn't been the only one crying so hard she couldn't breathe.

xxxxxx

They leave behind Missouri with little tears and a new bag of Rolos. Derek sings The Buggles as they zoom past the Farewell sign. Stiles, with Allison's head in his lap, taps against her rib cage the beat to the Song.

xxxxxx

Derek, in New York, talked to Laura on Sundays at nine in the morning and Fridays at four in the afternoon.

These were the only times they interacted because then the wounds were still too raw and Laura couldn't look at him without seeing their family's bones in his eyes and everything _hurt_.

In New York, for the first two years he was on his own and attended NYU and got his associate's in business law and was ready to continue when Laura showed up on his front steps one day, rain soaked to the bone, with runny mascara and all it took was one sentence to have him packed and upstate to the local pack in under a day.

"I need you."

xxxxxx

They skip Oklahoma altogether. It was Boyd's favorite state.

xxxxxx

"We were never really that close, me and Laura."

They're parked outside of a motel off on the highway to nowhere and Allison is off setting up traps and this is the only time he can say it. He's been having dreams lately, flashbacks to life before it all, life before the End and the alphas and Gerard and Kate and he needs someone. Allison is amazing and strong and pack and what he needs when full moons' hit the hardest but memories…this is Stiles' area of expertise.

He rolls over onto his side and meets the twenty-one year old's gaze. "We were siblings but…I loved her and it was enough."

Stiles stretches his hand over the expanse between them. He feels six degrees of separation away. "…it's never enough."

And that's why he goes to Stiles for this because he _gets it_. He gets it like that and there's nothing more to it.

He takes his hand.

xxxxxx

Texas is…different. It's hot and sticky and humid and on the first night there it rains and Stiles barks out laughter, spins around in circles and shouts out The Lumineers lyrics.

Allison doubles over in joy, rain soaking into her pours and making everything around her and on her feel like lead. She joins him and lets him kiss her all over her face, lets him believe they're alive.

Derek watches from the jeep with a grin.

xxxxxx

They decide to stay. Just for a bit.

xxxxxx

The pack was an interconnected weave of webs and lines and entanglements and it's a wonder how they survived so long without killing each other.

xxxxxx

The pack pre-Peter's psychotic break and post-Peter's psychotic break were two distinct groups for a good while, no matter the lines and webs. Still too much distrust and fear boiling in midst of it all.

It was Jackson that one day, invited them all to his house ("mansion, man, this thing is fucking – " "shut it stilinski") and told them all flat out and promptly, "look, I don't want to have to be dealing with derek's sour face forever so yeah we don't like each other and yeah we could have picked better people but we're all we've got. get over it and deal or scram, I'm pretty sure the alpha pack is looking into recruiting right now."

By the end of the month the distinction was none existent.

xxxxxx

They find an abandoned field with a nice open ranch house and Derek leans against the white frames sadly.

He looks into their hopeful eyes and nods. "Just for a little while."

They race past him and fight over who gets what floor space.

xxxxxx

Stiles, while setting up a wire tarp looks over at Allison and asks, "Are they helping now? The postcards?"

She looks up from where she'd been stacking his quarters and blows lightly on her castle of cooper and nickel. The whole thing collapses into a loud heaping mass.

"…they don't hurt like they used to."

He grins, crawls over to where she is and, "do you write scott dirty letters" because they can talk about them now without asphyxiation setting in.

She punches him in the leg. He limps away.

xxxxxx

He was never meant to be the alpha.

Neither was Laura for that matter. His dad, Mark, was supposed to grow old with his mom and increase the pack and by then Laura was supposed to be married off to some eligible alpha of an allied pack and Derek was supposed to be following her.

They never learned the proper strengths or mythology or rules or anything. They never learned how to lead people with such confidence and resolve the obvious choice was to follow them. They never learned how to survive without a pack to hold them up.

That is why, when the rest of the pack was at Stiles' for the night or at Jackson's for training, he pulled Boyd aside and taught him all he knew because if anyone was going to take over should he die (be murdered), it was going to be Boyd.

He never once considered the possibility that Boyd would be gone first.

xxxxxx

Derek creates a fort for himself in the ranch house made from old sheets and tattered clothes and Allison finds him an hour later, walks into the room in his boxers and NYU hoodie.

"You would have liked it." He says this instead of commenting on the trucker hat covering her wet hair.

"Peter told me the campus was big, spread out. Him and Boyd were working on something to try and convince my dad to let me go." She sits cross-legged in front of his fort, playing with the edge of the sheets.

Derek keeps his ears focused on her heartbeat and finally asks because it's been killing him not knowing and never realizing, "What was Peter to you?"

She raises an eyebrow.

"Him and Stiles were friends, sort of. He got Erica booze and helped Boyd when he needed to hide from his family and he let Isaac drive his car. Him and Lydia argued about quantum physics and Jackson just liked someone who could match him in rudeness. Scott was fine as long as he didn't hit on Melissa. What about you?"

She bites down on her lips and it's clear she never expected to be questioned on this. "I…I don't know. I've never really – " She pauses, pokes at her dimples and asks, "Did you know he loved your mom?"

"Everyone knew. Except her of course."

And just like that he gets it and why hadn't he seen it before?

He pulls her into the fort and it stands for another three hours before Stiles catapults down the stairs and into the sheets.

xxxxxx

"Do you think," Derek asks after Stiles has put down the CB radio, curling around the human and keeping his eyes trained on Allison's back as she stretches. "that it would have made any difference if we'd all been together that night? If they'd gotten to the house in time? If Peter had waited another week to go?"

Stiles pops open a bottle of Adderall, throws down three and shrugs. "I try not to think about it. Makes my heart hurt too much."

"But if – "

Stiles catches his hands in his own. "We would have made it."

xxxxxx

Texas is good for them.

Allison only writes thirty postcards a day when Derek is outside working out and Stiles lets the TMNT shades hang off his shirt and skips the CB announcements every few days and Derek doesn't sing as loudly anymore.

It's good for them and Allison is tanning and Stiles isn't having as many panic attacks and Derek spends more time in his full alpha form and it rains a lot.

It's good for them until it isn't.

xxxxxx

Derek finds the postcards.

xxxxxx

"Derek – Derek stop!"

"What the hell are you doing with these? Huh? Do you think any of these matter?"

"Der!"

"They. Are. Dead. Allison. Dead. Get over it and move on or get the hell out!"

xxxxxx

No one saw Allison becoming Jackson becoming anchor. Then again, no one remembered that before all the craziness with Gerard and alphas and the Kanima, Allison and Jackson had been on the road to being friends.

So, when Allison started siding with Jackson on arguments and watching his back in battles and sharing her peanut butter cookies with him, they got curious. Then suspicious.

Scott rested his chin on her chest, peppered kisses along her collarbone and asked sadly. "Are you screwing Jackson on the side?"

She punched him in the jaw and didn't talk to anyone for days.

They all tried in some way or the other to investigate because they were nosy as hell and wondered why the hell Jackson had any reason to be smiling.

Then the rival pack came. Then Allison was kidnapped and tortured and bruised and Jackson tore apart the alpha and carried Allison to Deaton and wouldn't let anyone near her and it was only when she was okay and awake again that he reverted back to his human form. Then he submitted to Derek again and gave up his right as an alpha and apologized to Scott.

Stiles nodded because he got it, as he leaned into Erica and really, there was no need for any of them to get it but it was nice having him on their side.

Lydia waited for her outside of detention one day and had only one thing to say really, "I get it."

Allison sighed, put down her bag and shrugged. "What?"

"He's pretty amazing once you get underneath his skin."

"…I love Scott."

"I never said you didn't."

Allison frowned, licked her lips and, "He's my best friend. Over Stiles, Derek. Peter. I don't have to apologize for that."

Lydia smirked and it was a smirk that was going to haunt Allison for years. "Good. Don't." She leaned forward and gave the older girl a tight hug. "They'll get over it. They're just not used to seeing Jackson act like a human being."

Allison opened her mouth but before she could say anything else, a familiar black mustang pulled up and Peter was sticking his head out of the driver's seat, grinning at the both of them. "Lydia, what a delight!"

Lydia snarled in response but the twinkle in her eye gave her away.

He unlocked the passenger door. "Coming?"

They were both gone before Lydia could do anything.

xxxxxx

Stiles wakes up with Derek looming over him, face grim and tight. "Get up. We're leaving."

As soon as Derek is out of his face, Stiles is scrambling up and into his jeans and boots. "Any reason I should know about?" He glances mournfully at his toothbrush and pops a peppermint gumball into his mouth.

The alpha throws a stack of papers at his feet and walks out. The jeep's engine starts.

Stiles frowns, picks up the stack and – _oh_. He grabs his duffel, stuffs everything valuable in sight inside and walks out.

xxxxxx

Derek picks through CDs before finding one that doesn't annoy the hell out of him. Stiles nods his head in approval and offers him a mini slinkie.

Derek ignores him and, "_My body tells me no but I won't quit, 'cause I want more! 'Cause I want more!_"

Allison rolls over in the backseat, secures her earplugs and continues counting all the t's in Lydia's third diary.

xxxxxx

"We should start a dead dad's club." Stiles says, huddled against Derek's leg.

Allison snorts and pulls her sleeping bag tighter around herself.

"I nominate myself as president of course. Aly, my dear, you are in charge of picking our slogan. Der-bear, my good man, would you mind providing the buttons?"

The alpha shuts him up with a single glance. Allison then proceeds to press her foot to Stiles', giving her support.

xxxxxx

None of them talk about the postcards or how they were Stiles' idea or how Derek had no right to be mad. He's still their alpha and human or not, a part of them still backs down instinctively at his word.

xxxxxx

"How do you even pronounce that? In grade school, I would always say 'ar-kansas' so I wouldn't forget how to spell it and then I find out it's actually 'ar-can-saw'. What kind of shit is that?"

Derek reaches forward and snatches the map away. Allison kicks both of their seats and goes back to sleep.

xxxxxx

While Stiles is filling up their gas tank Allison slides on over to Derek and climbs onto his back, hanging off his shoulders.

"I miss them." She whispers this against his ear and her voice is weak and small and tired and he reaches around to pull her into his chest.

She clings on and he kisses her hair and it's forgotten.

xxxxxx

Stiles feels guilty when he smiles. He doesn't mean to and he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be one of those people who can't move on and be happy and if Erica knew she'd kick him in the shins and bully him into laughing.

He wants to be happy and move on and dance in the rain with Aly and sing at the top of his lungs with Derek but he also wishes it wasn't just them three. He really wishes he didn't know what the insides of his family looked like.

xxxxxx

Allison pulls Stiles' trucker hat on and straddles his lap. "I want to get drunk."

Her fellow pack member smirks at this, tapping her nose and lips. "You sure look plenty drunk to me already."

She giggles at his touch and brings her head down onto his shoulder blade. "Derek found the good booze in some house. It smelled like rotten flesh."

Stiles sighs and pushes her off. He grabs the last bottled water and hands it back to her. "Drink this and try not to get yourself killed. I'll stand guard."

It's when he's stepping out of the jeep that she says it.

"I loved Scott. A lot. And I loved Jackson. And Peter too. I think, maybe, a little…I am _such_ a strumpet."

Stiles throws up against the jeep's door.

xxxxxx

They leave Arkansas quickly, even if Allison moans and bitches the whole time about her headache and "damn it, stiles, what the hell! shut him up!"

xxxxxx

Mississippi is a mistake for a number of reasons.

One: it has swamps. Stiles has refused to go anywhere near a swamp ever since that Avatar episode where the swamp gave that vision to Aang. ("they're _evil_ isaac, i don't care if it was helping. swamps shouldn't be able to do that! back me up here boyd!")

Two: the air makes Derek irritable and growly and he slashes at the space before him for no reason whatsoever.

Three: They drive straight into the city of Jackson and when Allison sees the sign she starts crying and doesn't stop for three hours.

They don't stay long.

xxxxxx

That night, pressed against both of them she tries to explain.

"I didn't mean to – I didn't…I can't…Jackson was – "

Stiles puts her out of her misery with a single glance. "You don't have to explain yourself. Your shame is our shame."

She falls asleep to their warmth.

xxxxxx

Derek gives back the map. Stiles grins and offers him, yet again, a gumball.

The alpha takes it.

(He doesn't chew it but, still. Progress).

xxxxxx

"I feel guilty sometimes because there are days where I miss one more than the other. It hurts."

Allison speaks this into Stiles' chest and it's shamed and dirty and he doesn't exactly know what to say because he does it too.

There are days when he wants nothing more than to be able to turn and tell Erica about the meteor shower he just saw and days where he wants to be able to fake wrestle with Boyd for the remote and in the end win because they always let him win and days when he wants to reach for a hand that is perfectly manicured and immaculate and soft and warm and days where he wants to be able to pull Scott in tight and hug him close and relish in the fact that they all made it through high school in one piece and days where all he wants is his dad's scent close by to –

"It's supposed to hurt. It's supposed to…sting like a thousand scorpion bites. It's not supposed to be easy. That's how we know we're still alive. When we can't breathe through all this grief; that's what drives us forward. Makes us push and live and fight. It's how we survive."

Allison tightens her arms and, "I'm sorry you never got your chance."

He shushes her and rocks her to sleep.

xxxxxx

They couldn't hide out forever.

xxxxxx

Drifters find them on their way to Tennessee and it's bad.

It's awful and bloody and bad and it ends with a broken leg for Allison, a nice new raw scar across his back for Stiles and Derek is technically legally dead for a few minutes.

As he hauls Derek back to their still surviving, beautiful amazing jeep, Stiles counts the number of heartbeats his alpha doesn't take.

xxxxxx

Stiles wipes the blood from his face and cleans his chest and puts him into boxers and whispers against his unhearing ear: "i'm going to love you 'till the day you die".

xxxxxx

Stiles sends out a message over the CB radio and it's different than his others. There's no note of desperation to this one and no hysteria bleeding through the words. He speaks into the mic slowly and clearly and: "_this is stilinski asking out again. if there is anybody listening, hearing this…are any survivors, any at all…just…please._"

xxxxxx

He returns to them growling and flashing red and Allison kisses him all over his forehead and cheeks and neck and bites down on his collarbone. Stiles crushes their hands together.

xxxxxx

That night, they hear a deep, rumbling and undeniable werewolf howl.

Derek breaks down into a sobbing mess.

xxxxxx

They make it the rest of the ride to Tennessee without a single word.

xxxxxx

Stiles' dad found out by a simple accident. And it was all Greenburg's fault. Naturally.

It was all Greenburg's fault (again) because the idiot had skipped practice and left Stiles to take the blunt of the suicide runs. Which led to Derek having to pick up Stiles when Scott stole the jeep to drive around Lydia because "i need to breathe actual air, _imbeciles…_but you're my imbeciles so it's okay". And that's why they were on the road at the exact same time as a stupid deer of all things and why the car swerved and why they had to hitchhike back to the Stilinski house and why they walked in bloody and bruised and tired to find his dad at the kitchen table.

Freaking Greenburg.

xxxxxx

"I think Scott was going to propose."

Allison's head snaps up from where Derek is wrapping her leg and readjusting her splint. It was the best Stiles could do considering the lack of plaster.

"What – "

"He asked me if I thought you'd prefer a diamond or princess cut."

She presses her hand to her throat and waits for the panic to set in. When it doesn't: "What did you tell him?"

"Diamond."

"…good boy."

He swipes at her head.

xxxxxx

Stiles is going to be honest here.

As much as he loves Allison (adores her, cherishes her, hell, he's the reason she was even allowed anywhere near erica and boyd) and as much as he loves Derek (wants him, pines for him, would _die _for him), there is a small part of him that wishes he had Erica and Scott with him.

It's the part of him that sets of the remaining panic attacks and it's the part of him that uses the CB radio and it's the part of him that eats expired chocolates for the hell of it.

It's what makes him hate himself.

xxxxxx

Tennessee is nothing special.

Derek and Allison sing 'Long Ride Home' softly and in harmony and make Stiles incredibly jealous of them both.

Stiles gives his weekly CB announcements, trucker hat and all.

At each new gas stop Stiles empties the registers and Allison holds him at night.

Derek shifts and runs for hours and waits for a howl that's never coming.

Tennessee is nothing special. Until it is.

xxxxxx

Isaac swung both arms around Scott and shook him hard. "We made it." He whispered and they watched together as Stiles danced around Erica and Boyd in a circle, arms flailing and all and as Derek ruffled Lydia's hair and she let him and Peter gave Allison a slight smirk and Jackson spun her around, matching each and every shriek.

Scott leaned back into his pack mate, hands clenched tightly around his cap. "Damn right we did."

xxxxxx

"Derek?"

"Hmm?"

"…I'm sorry my aunt was such a psycho ephebophilia bitch."

"Go back to sleep…and thanks."

xxxxxx

"Hey Aly?" Stiles calls, eyes steady and on the road before him. He reaches over and takes Derek's hand in his own.

She stops playing with Boyd's watch and hums back.

"We're going to make it."

The smile she offers in response isn't watery.

xxxxxx

It happens as they're crossing from Tennessee into Virginia.

Allison is driving with Stiles lounging in the backseat, spread out all over Derek, CB radio nice and handy on his chest.

A minute before they reach the state line the CB radio crackles alive on top of him, sending a rough and grumpy voice through the jeep: "stilinski? this is wesson. and we hear you nice and clear."

xxxxxx

They make it.

**xxxxxx**

_"Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet."_

- Jennifer Egan, _A Visit from the Goon Squad_**  
**

**xxxxxx**


End file.
